Ruby on Rails Developer
Dalza - Building the Coalition of the Determined
Remote but you must be able to attend in-person commitments where required
Part-time (50% of your working week) · Fully remote
The Role That Matters
Dalza is an early-stage EdTech / HealthTech platform that helps families coordinate care for children with additional and special educational needs. The backend is the engine behind all of it, and we’re looking for an experienced Ruby on Rails engineer to take full, solo ownership of it.
This is a solo backend role. You won’t have a senior engineer above you to lean on, you’ll be the person responsible for the backend, from planning through to production. So we need someone genuinely senior, comfortable making architectural decisions alone, writing clean and maintainable code, and being trusted with a platform that handles sensitive information about children.
You’ll work closely with our frontend developer, product, and design to ship features that matter.
What You’ll Actually Do
You’ll own the Dalza backend end to end: designing it, building it, shipping it, and keeping it healthy in production. You’ll work closely with our frontend developer, product, and design to turn ideas into features that real families use. In a small team, how you communicate matters as much as how you code: you’ll be making decisions, explaining them clearly, and carrying real responsibility from day one.
Tech Stack
Ruby on Rails
PostgreSQL and well-designed relational data models
RESTful APIs and webhooks, documented with Swagger/OpenAPI
Background and scheduled jobs with Redis and Sidekiq
Production-grade third-party integrations (payments, auth, messaging)
File storage on AWS S3
Authentication with Devise / Devise Token Auth
Bonus Points!
Stripe (web subscriptions) and mobile in-app subscriptions
Mailjet (email), Firebase Cloud Messaging (push), Stream (chat)
Sentry (error monitoring), RSpec / Rswag (testing & API docs)
Docker (local dev), AWS + Terraform (infrastructure)
Experience building secure products in regulated environments
What we are looking for:
What we offer:
Opportunity to join an early-stage startup on a meaningful mission.
Autonomy and ownership over core parts of the product.
Work with a small, kind, and ambitious team.
Huge impact – your work directly improves families’ daily lives.
The Honest Bit
We’ll be straight with you, because we’d want the same.
Dalza is early-stage. That means lean budgets, evolving priorities, and a product that’s still taking shape. You won’t find big teams, established processes, or someone to hand you a perfectly specced ticket. Some things are figured out; plenty aren’t yet. You’ll wear real responsibility, sometimes with less scaffolding than a larger company would give you.
In return, you get something most roles can’t offer: the chance to own a backend outright, make the decisions that matter, and watch your work directly improve the lives of children and the families supporting them. If that kind of ownership and purpose is what you’re after, we’d love to hear from you.
Ready to join the Coalition?
The application form is the only way to apply for this role.
We review every form submission personally. To keep that process fair and focused, we will only consider applications submitted through the form above.
Please do not send your CV or application by any other channel. We will not review or respond to:
– Emails to any Dalza address, company or personal
– CVs or messages sent to individual team members
– LinkedIn messages or connection notes to anyone on the team
– Direct messages on any other platform
Anything sent outside the form will go unread. The form is the only channel, applying any other way will not get your application seen, so please use it.
For genuine questions about the role, you may contact pioneers@dalza.com. This address is for questions only and is not a route to apply.